I read a great book recently - The Non Designers Design Book. It gives rules and reasoning for making graphical design decisions.
I soon got the opportunity to put the ideas into practice when working with my brother Dan on our joint promotion of his band sKANKT and RossTech's emailing service Tonsho. I think it worked a treat, but I'll let you judge for yourselves and leave comments.
The credit for the design goes to my brother, he did all the actual manipulation, my input was just to bug him with mails suggesting changes.
Here are the design stages and the emailed suggestions.
Version 1
Hi Dan,
I have some ideas from the design book which may help.
The repeated dots are good - its good to use repeating elements in the design.
The text should have more contrast. Find the main parts "Tell your mates about SKANKt" and "www.skankt.com/tonsho" and make them big and bold. One at the top, one at the bottom will bounce the eye and keep it in the page. Make all other text much smaller, mabye even 8pt - if people are going to read it they will read it if its small. The smaller text will make it look better and help the main points stand out.
Don't worry about filling the page - allow some white space for structure.
Alignment - There is a mixture of left and centre alignment. Try left or right aligning the centred parts. (The indented parts are fine)
Interest - we could use a photo from a gig (maybe the one I took of the crowd surfing at coleford). I would add a 'photo mount border' and try tilting it at an angle and making it really big, so it bursts out of the flyer. The photo will communicate the idea of sending the photo, quicker than the text.
Ed.
Version 2
Hi Dan,
Much better! The frame for the photo is cool.
Some more changes:
Sent -> Send
Lower case S's in share and send
More white space needed between photo and text
Suggest putting the Share & Send items together under the photo - to give repetion and grouping
Drop the line "To find out how..."
Be bold, try make the photo bigger - let it go off the page even
Make the tonsho logo smaller - try maybe half the size
.... I'd like to see it at this stage to see how the following impact
Remove the border - having stuff in the corners is constraining and forces the centering
Align all elements either to the left or right (e.g. url and logo right aligned, everything else left aligned)
Use the cool SKANKt colours and texture from the border to form horizontal or vertical strips that highlight sections of the design. For example "Tell your mates about SKANKt:" could be highlighted with a yellow background, maybe not quite straight. Almost like a tear across the page. The URL could have the same effect with a yellow background, maybe at a slightly different angle.
Ed.
Version 3
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